Category Archives: Skeptical Philosophy

There are no innocent beliefs

 

According to Professor Arthur  Schafer, if we are credulous people then we can easily believe the Christian story, or the Muslim story, or the Jewish story.  Or we can believe as the Mennonite woman interviewed by the CBC believed that eating flowers was as effective at defeating the measles virus as vaccines.

 

If we are credulous, we can believe anything because it makes us feel good. Then we can believe horoscopes because that makes us feel good, even though there is absolutely no evidence to support such beliefs. Even reputable newspapers publish horoscopes. It makes their readers feel good. Then they are more inclined to purchase the newspapers.

If we are credulous people, we can believe that Bill Gates implanted tiny chips into vaccines so that he could control the world, or kill millions of people, without any evidence at all. If we are credulous people our political leaders can make us believe that an election they lost was stolen by the opposition, even in the complete absence of any evidence.

If we are credulous people, we can believe that ivermectin can kill the coronavirus just because it is very effective at killing parasites in livestock even though we have no evidence to support that belief at all. If we are credulous people we will believe anything at all,  just because our political leader who has virtually no scientific knowledge at all, tells us to believe it. Credulity is a very dangerous thing. Not just for individuals, but for society. Society does not work well unless we believe our leaders when belief is rationally justified and do not believe them when the evidence does not support their claims. We cannot afford credulity.

The fact is, according to Arthur Schafer, that our society which many of us think of as secular, is actually “impregnated with a lot of irrational superstitions.”

Today almost no one agrees with William Kingdon Clifford, says Schafer. Schafer says instead, people believe things just because authority figures, such as Presidents, or mothers, or church leaders tell us to believe them. They are willing to accept all manner of irrational beliefs. According to Schafer, many people believe what they have been told to believe by their parents as they grew up, without challenging those beliefs at all. They require no evidence to support them.  As a result, children born and raised in a Muslim home usually become adherents of Islam. Children born and raised in a Christian home usually become adherents of Christianity. Parents want their children to believe them, even when they give no good reasons for doing so.

As a result, Schafer argues that people are entitled to believe what they want to believe, but are not allowed to enforce those views on other. This is called tolerance. In a pluralistic society, we must tolerate diverse views provided they don’t hurt others. To get along with others we must learn to respect their diverse views and must reject their harmful views, that are unsupported by evidence,  but in such a way that we can still tolerate each other. We have to learn to live together. Sometimes that is not easy.

This is the attitude of tolerance. This is a liberal good—a very important  good at that. We tolerate the fact that others have irrational beliefs. We tolerate that they believe any kind of superstition no matter how nonsensical as long as they don’t try to impose it on us.

But Clifford goes farther than that. Clifford is different. He doesn’t believe that your belief in horoscopes is innocent. According to Clifford, says “there are no innocent beliefs.”  All beliefs have consequences.  Many liberals hold that I have the right to believe whatever I want, so long as I don’t harm anyone else. Clifford says that by believing irrational things we are exposing ourselves and the societies in which we live, to serious potential harms. As long as we would harm only ourselves that might be acceptable. But by our actions we are actually exposing many others to serious harms as well through our credulity. That we are not entitled to do. That is morally wrong, he says. Credulity is a harm that we must work hard to suppress. Tolerating irrational beliefs is a sure way to encourage such harms.

 

Credulity is Bad

 

 

The philosopher William Kingdon Clifford argued, that to believe anything because it comforts you, or makes you feel good, or sustains you in life, or makes life a little less intolerable, is not just epistemically wrong, not just intellectually wrong, but morally wrong. In fact, if the decision that needs to be made is serious enough, such as whether or not to send people to war, or whether or not to cut health benefits to millions of people to raise money to give tax breaks to wealthy people, or whether or not to encourage  vaccines to fight serious diseases or encourage eating wild flowers instead, the decision could amount to one of the worst crimes that you can commit. That’s a pretty drastic statement. According to Clifford  It is a travesty and has some horrible consequences.  We will get to those later. In any event, according to Clifford this is a morally wrong. I think it is hard to argue with that. Serious decisions must be made on the basis of serious evidence, analysis, and scrutiny before they are made and innocent people suffer.

 

Arthur Schafer, a wonderful philosopher and ethicist from the University of Manitoba, and the first philosopher I ever heard speak in person, is a fan of Clifford’s reasoning. According to Schafer, Clifford sees our reliance   on illusion on false pictures of the universe, as amounting to creating in us a walking time bomb. As Schafer said at talk to a talk given to the Winnipeg Humanists, Atheists, and Skeptics, Society,  “to put it a little less dramatically, when we believe things because they make us feel good, rather than because we have good evidence for them, as Clifford argues, we make ourselves credulous people.” That Clifford says is wicked. Schafer agrees with that conclusion. So do I.

 

Again, we are talking only about serious important issues here. We are not talking about a decision to pick a red jelly bean rather than a white jelly bean from a cup. For those decisions we are completely free to make them on the basis of a whim, or an inkling, or an instinct or even on a guess.  But we can’t justify decisions that seriously affect the health or welfare of other people on such a basis.

 

If we are credulous people we can easily believe, as the Mennonite woman interviewed by the CBC radio did, that eating wild flowers to combat measles is better than taking vaccines. If we have been conditioned by our parents to be credulous, they are partly responsible. Credulity can be dangerous—to ourselves and others. That is why Clifford and Schafer said encouraging credulity is dangerous for society. Not just for the believer, for society.

We can believe whatever we want but we should be careful about helping to create a credulous society. As we are now seeing everywhere, that can cause a lot of harm.

The Ethics of Belief

 

One thing I have learned from the Covid-19 pandemic and the measles vaccine fiasco, particularly among Mennonites, is that it is important—vital in fact—that important beliefs are grounded in rational thinking, evidence, and facts.  Wishes are not helpful. Neither, in my view is faith. I know this will be controversial. So be it. More on this later.

 

There was an interesting philosopher in the 19th century in England by the name of William Kingdon Clifford. He is no longer very well-known but he had some good ideas. Some were very controversial. Radical even.  Here is one of those ideas: “ It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” He wrote that in his book The Ethics of Belief which was published in in 1877 or in 1879 depending on whom you believe.

 

Here is another f comment from the same book equally as radical:

 “If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterwards, keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise about it in his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company of men that call in question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing it—the life of that man is one long sin against mankind.”

 

Clifford took beliefs seriously. And I have to agree with him. In simplified terms he believed it was immoral to believe things for which one has insufficient evidence.

 

Here was an example of what he meant by this claim. Clifford told the unhappy tale of a shipowner who was planning to send to sea a shipload of people on a rickety old boat.  The ship-owner had doubts about the seaworthiness of his ship but nonetheless sent ship out to sea anyway heavily loaded with people.  He believed the ship was seaworthy but he really had no good reasons for that belief. In the case of something as important as sending a ship-load of people to sea he ought to have been more careful. He should not have assumed without good evidence that the ship was alright.  Clifford argued, persuasively, to my mind, that the ship owner was guilty of negligence  for the deaths (not murder which requires intent to murder) even though he sincerely believed the ship was sound. According to Clifford “[H]e had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him,” that it was safe to send those people on that ship. His decision was morally wrong. Serious issues require serious deliberation. Clifford said the owner ought  to have checked the boat thoroughly.  He should have examined it carefully, got expert advice if needed, weighed all the evidence with scrutiny and care before sending the vessel out to sea.

 

Clifford would have been appalled by Donald Trump. Why? Because Trump always invariably say he makes his decisions on the basis of instincts. Not evidence! Instincts. I have heard him say that many timers. Instincts are not evidence. Instincts are not reasons. Important decisions, such as decisions about sending a boat load of people to sea must be based on evidence, not instincts or hunches. Important decisions a  president can make such as whether or not he should send bombers around the world to bomb his enemies, or deciding whether captured illegal immigrants should be sent to El Salvador or whether government departments should be closed on account of waste, fraud, and abuse must all be dealt with on the basis of evidence—the best evidence available—and good solid logical reasoning. Not instincts.

 

What does this have to do with Mennonites and vaccines? Everything!

Conclave: Faith, Doubt and Ceremony

 

Director Edward Berger who directed the film Conclave, told the BBC that the conclave was thought of as “an ancient spiritual ritual.”  We must remember that one of the wonders of the Roman Catholic Church is its ritual.  I remember that when I was young, a friend of mine, who was a Mennonite boy raised by an aufgelna (‘fallen off the branch’, Mennonite) whose father scandalously had weekly “Sunday School” in his little gazebo that included alcohol for those so inclined so early in the morning. Much to my surprise at the time, my friend told me he was attracted to the Catholic church because of its ceremonies.  I was surprised by that comment, as I had been brought up to think that ceremonies got in the way of faith.

The film demonstrates some of those ceremonies thrillingly in ways only good cinema can do. Watch it and be amazed. Clearly, ceremony can be part of a religious quest, no matter what us dullard Mennonites may think.

Another major issue in the movie is the question of doubt and its relationship to faith.  Can there be faith without doubt? It is an old and important question.  Brother Lawrence speaks warmly of doubt

Brother Cardinal Lawrence, the Dean of the College of Cardinals, gives an opening address to the Cardinals gathered in conclave which is a majestic homage to the twins, doubt and faith:

 

“Let me speak from the heart for a moment. St. Paul said, ‘Be subject to one another our of reverence for Christ. To work together, and to grow together, we must be tolerant. No one person or…or faction seeking to dominate another. And speaking to the Ephesians who were of course a mixture of Jews and gentiles, Paul reminds us that God’s gift to the church is its variety. It is this variety, this diversity of people and views which gives our church its strength. And over the course of many years in the service of our Mother the Church let me tell you, there is one sin, which I have come to fear above all others. Certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. Even Christ was not certain at the end. My God, My God, why are you forsaken me? He cried out in agony at the ninth hour on the cross. Our faith is a living thing, precisely because it walks hand-in-hand with doubt. If there was only certainty, and no doubt, there would be no mystery and therefore no need for faith. Let us pray that God will grant us a Pope who doubts. And let him grant us a Pope who sins and asks for forgiveness and who carries on.”

 

I think these are wise words for us all on our religious quest. Certainty is the enemy of faith, not its defender.

Is it even possible to have faith without doubt?  There is no faith in mathematics. No one has faith that 2 + 2 =4. That is a certainty. No faith is needed. If you don’t understand that you don’t understand mathematics.

 

The War on Smart

 

Late night comedians are smart. At least they are smart enough to gather together a diverse collection of funny people. And when they smell ignorance, they smell funny. Recently this was proved by the actions of Donald Trump. Actually, this has happened many times, but it certainly happened when Donald Trump declared war on brains. One of those actions—there are actually many—was the dismissal of basically all of the Department of Education. After all who needs education. Trump’s sons didn’t need no education!

 

As Jimmy Kimmel said, “Trump famously said he loves the poorly educated, and now he will have so many more people to love.” Supposedly that is what it means to say ignorance is bliss.

 

Kimmel also said this: “Trump signed the order [gutting the Department of Education] during an event at the White House. They invited  like ‘Hey kids, who hates school?’  And they’re like ‘Well we all do!’  And they said, ‘Well, good news, it’s over.’

 

One more comment from Kimmel:  “The idea behind this is to let the states come up with their own educational standards. For instance, from here one, in order to receive a high school diploma in Florida, all you have to do is complete the maze on the back of the kids’ menu at Fuddruckers.”

 

Jimmy Fallon said this, “Today, President Trump signed an executive order to shut down the Department of Education. It’s a historic move that years from now kids will not read about in history books.”

 

Greg Gutfeld said, “President Trump signed an order today to dismantle the Department of Education. Yep. Soon employees will be reading their pink slips at a third-grade level.”

 

Yes, in the good ole USA, famous the world over for the strength of its universities is turning to dumb. Dumb on steroids.  And this is no accident. That is what Trump and the Dumpsters want—ignorance.  They want dumb! They want it. And they’ll get it. Kimmel was right when he called it “a confederacy of dunces.”

 

Why does Trump want dumb?  I think Hannah Arendt had the answer::

 

“Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.”

 

Trump, like most totalitarians likes dumb!

 

Please-be-True Fantasies

 

Critics at Large, a podcast of the New Yorker discussed the subject of George Santos and his participation in what they called his scams, had a panel of columnists discuss his case. The columnists agreed we are living in the golden age of scam in which Santos is merely the latest iteration. This really is the point. Many people in North America live in a FantasyLand that is filled with astounding lies that are exploding through the ethnosphere. We are in the midst of surging lies and scams. They are ubiquitous.

 

Kurt Anderson in his gem of a book FantasyLand explains why this is so. He traces it back to the delusions of the original European visitors to North America.  This is what he said about early settlers in the United States, but would no doubt say about the same about the early European settlers to Canada. This world of illusions is by no means confined to the United States, but as I have said, that is where this world was profoundly amplified. This is how Anderson described it:

“The first English people in the New World imagined themselves as heroic can-do characters in exciting adventures. They were self-fictionalizing extremists who abandoned everything familiar because of their blazing beliefs, their long-shot hopes and dreams, their please-be-true fantasies.”

We are the ancestors of those fantasists. We are following in their footsteps 5 centuries later. And George Santos is merely the latest manifestation of that phenomenon.please-be-true fantasies.”

This is what  what happens when we abandon critical thinking and skepticism in favor of fantasies that we want to be true so ignore the lack of evidence for them .

 

When the opinion is partly true and partly false.

 

John Stuart Mill in his classic book, On Liberty, considered free speech from one more perspective: namely beliefs that are partly true and partly false. Here too, he said, is another situation in which diversity of opinion is advantageous. In fact this is almost always the situation for invariably any opinion is not absolutely true. First, he considered the case of an opinion that might be false. The second was the case where the opinion is actually true, but a conflict with the opposite error is needed in order to clarify the opinion or preserve or create a deep feeling about that true opinion. In this case the contrary opinion can help immeasurably. Thirdly, Mill considers the case where neither opinion contains the whole truth and nothing but the truth. As Mill said,

 

“But there is a commoner case than either of these; when the conflicting doctrines, instead of being one true and the other false, share the truth between them; and the non-conforming opinion is needed to supply the remainder of the truth, of which the received doctrine embodies only a part  Popular opinions, on the subject not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth. They are a part of the truth; sometimes a greater, sometimes a smaller part, but exaggerated, distorted, and disjoined from the truths by which they ought to be accompanied and limited.   Heretical opinions, on the other hand, are generally some of these suppressed and neglected truths, bursting the bonds which kept them down, and either seeking reconciliation with the truth contained in the common opinion, or fronting it as enemies, and setting themselves up, with similar exclusiveness, as the whole truth. The latter case is hitherto the most frequent, as in the human mind one-sidedness has always been the rule, and many-sidedness the exception. Hence, even in revolutions of opinion, one part of the truth usually sets while another rises.”

 

We ought never to think in black and white. We should always think in colour or include many shades of gray. Even revolutions usually just add one partial and incomplete truth for another. Hopefully the new truth will be better adapted to the needs of the time than the opinion or doctrine that is replaced. This is the profound point that Mill made which is particularly relevant to the age of extremes in which we live.

It was the glory of English empiricism and liberalism that grew out of the great period after the Religious Wars of the 17th century that produced thinkers willing to acknowledge that truth was not always entirely confined to one side of a discussion. Nowadays, this attitude is sadly rare. Nowadays, both sides often think they have the entire truth and the other side is of the devil. We must recognize that pure truth and pure falsehood rarely find homes on opposite sides of a dispute. That’s why holy truth and pure evil can rarely be found either. We should never expect to find pure truth or pure falsehood. Life is always more complicated than that. Mill was a member of that great British tradition of empiricism and liberalism.

As John Stuart Mill said,

“Such being the partial character of prevailing opinions, even when resting on a true foundation, every opinion which embodies somewhat of the portion of the truth which the common opinion omits, ought to be considered precious, with whatever amount of error and confusion that truth may be blended. No sober judge of human affairs will feel bound to be indignant because those who force on our notice truths which we should otherwise have overlooked, overlook some of those which we see. Rather, we will think that so long as popular truth is one-sided, it is more desirable than otherwise that unpopular truth should have one-sided assertors too; such being usually the most energetic, and most likely to compel reluctant attention to the fragment of wisdom which they proclaim as if it were the whole.”

 

The thinkers of the Enlightenment were surprised that they did not have the entire truth in their minds. They were shocked because it did appear to them that all proponents of science and philosophy would ultimately agree with them. They thought they had the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but they were rudely awakened from their slumber by one lonely thinker. That thinker was Rousseau. He gave Mills an example of a thinker who opposed the gathering consensus and cut it down at the knees. Mills described this momentous event this way,

“Thus, in the eighteenth century, when nearly all the instructed, and all those of the uninstructed who were led by them, were lost in admiration of what is called civilization, and of the marvels of modern science, literature, and philosophy, and while greatly overrating the amount of unlikeness between the men of modern and those of ancient times, indulged in the belief that the whole of the difference was in their own favour; with what salutary shock did the paradoxes of Rousseau explode like bombshells in the midst, dislocating the compact mass of one-sided opinion, and forcing its elements to recombine in a better form and with additional ingredients.  Not that the current opinions were on the whole farther from the truth than Rousseau’s were; on the contrary, they were nearer to it; they contained more of the positive truth, and very less of error.  Nevertheless there lay in Rousseau’s doctrine, and has floated down the stream of opinion along with it, a considerable amount of exactly those truths which popular opinion wanted; and these are the deposit which was left behind when the flood subsided. The superior worth of simplicity of life, the enervating and demoralizing effect of the trammels and hypocrisies of artificial society, minds since Rousseau wrote; and they will in time produce their due effect, though at present needing to be asserted as much as ever, and to be asserted by deeds, for words, on this subject have nearly exhausted their power.”

 

This was an outstanding example of what Mill was talking about. One side rarely has the whole truth. Mill, like me, had a lot of sympathy for the thinkers of the Enlightenment who brought reason and critical thought to the problems of the times. This was desperately needed. Mill accepts almost everything the Enlightenment thinkers stood for. So do I. But that does not mean they had the whole truth to themselves and their opponents had nothing good on their side. Rousseau was the outstanding example of exactly thought. He added truth to the other side and hence made both sides richer.

In fact, this phenomenon is extremely common. You can see it clearly in contemporary politics where each side thinks it has the whole truth, when both sides would benefit from a dose of truth from the other side, but is very reluctant to accept such a heretical possibility. Instead of that each sides tries to shut the other down.  Each should be listening to the free speech of the other. Once again, I come down on the side of heresy.

 

 

The Adversarial System

 

John Stuart Mill in his classic book On Liberty takes pains to point out that he is not saying that there must always be dissenting opinions. He does not say that a truth unanimously adopted does not at that moment stop to be a truth. Mill admits that when a doctrine does achieve near universal acceptance, that makes it more difficult. That is a serious drawback, because the necessity of explaining it to opponents or defending it against their attacks is most beneficial. But the absence of that does not end the matter. He says then teachers or others who are trying to persuade must find a substitute. They must find “some contrivance for making the difficulties of the question present to the learner’s consciousness, as if they were pressed upon him by a dissentient champion, eager for conversion.”

 

This is precisely the method adopted by the legal system. We call it the adversarial system. Both sides of a dispute are represented by competent advocates who make sure that the judge or trier of fact or law is fully apprised of all arguments in favor of a proposition or against it. That is why judges never want to proceed unless both parties to a dispute are represented by capable advocates. If they do not ensure this, the judge might make a mistake. Of course, even under the adversarial system, judges can make mistakes, but the chances are much less when that system is respected. It is a system that has stood the test of time.

 

Mill uses another example of a contrivance to substitute for full argument by both parties. This is the use of the Socratic method so loved by my insurance law professor. The system was based on a proper understanding of the classics of Greek philosophy brought forth by Plato. I remember reading some of those dialogues in my first year of university. Plato had Socrates often start a discussion by considering a commonly held opinion and then chipping away at it. Socrates referred to himself as an annoying “gadfly.” Annoying yes; but essential to the task of seeking the truth. Mill put it this way,

 

“The Socratic dialectics, so magnificently exemplified in the dialogues of Plato, were a contrivance of this description. They were essentially a negative discussion of the great questions of philosophy and life, directed with consummate skill to the purpose of convincing any one who had merely adopted the commonplace of received opinion that he did not understand the subject—that he as yet attached no definite meaning to the doctrines he professed; in order that, becoming aware of his ignorance, he might be put in the way to obtain a stable belief, resting on a clear apprehension both of the meaning of doctrines and of their evidence.”

 

Mill also mentioned how a similar approach was used by the famous “school disputations of the Middle Ages.” This technique was designed to make sure that a young student of theology understood fully his own position and in consequence the position of his opponent so that he could successfully argue for one and confute the other. Of course, as Mill realised, the Schoolmen had one fatal flaw that Mill would never countenance by his methods, the Schoolmen accepted authority rather than reason. That made them infinitely inferior to the Socratic dialogues.

 

Law courts in the common law system suffer from the same defect. In matters of law Common Law courts accede to the authority of precedent that they are not free to challenge. At least theoretically that is the case. In practice sharp judges can often reach the conclusion they want to reach. While I love the adversarial system of Common law courts, I too am opposed to dogged obeisance to authority and think this is one of the reasons that courts make so many serious mistakes. If an aeronautical engineers used this method no one would want to fly.

 

For all of these reasons Mill emphasizes that it would be eminently foolish to disregard the opportunity to hear contrary opinions when they are offered. It is so difficult to create artificial contrivances to ensure that contrary views are heard, that decision makers should never forgo genuine contrary views. They should be embraced, never constrained. Mill concludes as follows, “If there are any persons who contest a received opinion, or who will do so if the law or opinion will let them, let us thank them for it, open our minds to listen to them, and rejoice that there is someone to do for us what we otherwise ought, if we have any regard for either the certainty or the vitality of our convictions to do with much greater labour ourselves.

 

Free speech is always beneficial to the holder of opinions, whether true or false, provided the commentary is genuine and not frivolous or vexatious or totally absurd. As Mill said, such opinions should be “embraced, not constrained.’’ the contrary opinion and then deal with it.

That is why we need free speech.

Debate adds life

 

Coke used to claim that ‘Coke adds Life.”  I would suggest, based on my reading of John Stuart Mill htat debate adds life. Mill makes another important point in his classic book On Liberty, to illustrate the truth of this position. He points out

“it is illustrated in the experience of almost all ethical doctrines and religious creeds. They are all full of meaning and vitality to those who originate them, and to the direct disciples of the originators. Their meaning continues to be felt in undiminished strength, and is perhaps brought out into even fuller consciousness, so long as the struggle lasts to give the doctrine or creed an ascendancy over other creeds.

After that they die.

I will give another example that obviously does not come from Mill. It has often been remarked with interest that the Christian religion is much more vibrant in the United States than all or most other western countries. Why is that?  Some have felt that the reason for this remarkable achievement is the counter intuitive fact that in the United States religion has been kept separate from the state and the state has not been allowed to establish a religion. As a result, the US has robust religious freedom. As a result of this freedom of religion, each sect has to be constantly aware that there are competitive belief systems out there. No creed can take for granted that authority will support it. It must convince adherents to stick with it and must convince others to join if it wants to grow adherents. No sect can rely on official support. That is exactly what religious groups needs—convincing.  Anything less will be a dead creed. As a result each religious group must remain vibrant or it will lose out to competitive religious groups.

It is interesting that religious groups often forget this fact when they lobby governments to support their religious positions. For example, many Christian groups are keenly disappointed when they are not allowed to have public schools adopt and encourage their particular viewpoints. In the United States, reading the Bible in school has been prohibited. The amazing thing is that the United States without an established church has the most vibrant churches.

Establishing a church or a church doctrine has the opposite effect of making it less real and less meaningful, because no one is required to consider alternatives or debate its merits.

In Europe, for example, where churches have become identified with the state, the religions have become less vibrant. The absence of free discussion and debate leads to religious views become encrusted over and ultimately dead. Religious groups should be the ones to resist their own establishment as official religions.

That is why received opinions tend to be dead opinions. We all know that intuitively. We remember best what we have actively worked hard to learn. If someone tells us something it tends to stick.  I remember when I was a law student. I wanted professors to spoon feed me. The last thing I wanted was for the Professor to ask me a question and defend it. That was hard and scary. Being spoon fed ideas and principles was much easier.

Law school was taught on the basis of the case system. In other words we considered actual law cases where judges had made decisions and then we tried to extract principles from those cases that we applied to new situations.

 

I had one Professor in First year Tort law who was a brilliant and engaging lecturer. I loved his class. He summarized each case we had to know to such an extent that we did not even have to read any cases. In fact, he gave us the principle of each case and I dutifully wrote them down. He even told us we did not have to read a single case!  That made it very easy. Then at the end of the school year, to prepare for the exam,  I wrote crib notes reducing each case to one principle. I memorized about a 1,000 case names with a legal principles reduced to one or at most 2 lines. I was amazed at how well I could memorize. In fact I got an A in that class and was extremely pleased with myself as a result. I should not have been so pleased. I had not really learned much.

In my second year of Law School I took a course in insurance law. We had no choice. It was a compulsory course. I would not have selected the course because the Professor had a reputation for using the Socratic method. He asked us questions about actual cases that he assigned for us to read. In fact if we did not read a case he threw us out of the class because we were then not in a position to discuss it, for we knew nothing about it. That was humiliating and we did not want that to happen. So we dutifully read each assigned case.

Then in class the Professor of Insurance law never or rarely lectured us. Instead he asked us questions about the cases. I was constantly in fear for this approach, because I liked to sit with my head down writing notes, not wanting to be asked questions. After all having to answer questions would make me think. I did not want to think. I wanted to be told. This professor did not allow that. We had to read, we had to discuss whether we liked it or not. We had to think!

I was frequently surprised at how the Professor managed to find things in cases, which I had diligently read but failed to notice. He was brilliant. He found nuances to the legal principles that I could never find. He was a fantastic professor as I eventually realized after my fears subsided and I got used to what I had to do.

Eventually I realized I was enjoying the course and learning a lot. I loved the course. The Professor became my favorite Professor. Not only that but I was amazed at how much I learned in that class. I do not remember how well I did in that course. It did not matter for I had learned so much.

I was even more amazed, many years later how much knowledge I had retained from that class, even though I never practiced in the area of insurance law. The knowledge that was hard earned stuck with me for decades. The principles of tort law, which I had learned so well by rote memorization soon disappeared into the ether. I soon forgot them all. I did not really learn them because I had not engaged in the subject. Sitting back and learning by rote is a poor way to learn, even when the professor is very good and engaging. The principles I had memorized were not really meaningful. They were not alive inside me as the principles of insurance law were. As soon as the exam was over I started to forget what I had learned by memorization.

I think it is the same with principles of religion or ethics. The hard won principles which we must defend mean the most. The easy answers are dead and soon forgotten.

Many years later I became a part time teacher of law at the same University. I realized that I did not want to lecture students. I realized they would not really be engaged if I did that. So I became the type of Professor I had hated in Law School. I used as best I could the Socratic method that my Insurance law professor had used. I wanted my students to become engaged and learn something that would stick in their minds. I wanted them to debate and consider alternatives. I did not want to them to memorize even my ideas and my theories. I hope I did that. I drilled them with questions and made them defend their positions.

 

Indoctrination is not the best way to teach and is not the best way to learn. Indoctrination leads to the death of doctrine, as odd as that sounds. I know many parents who think they must do that, and provided it is done from a very young age, can lead to doctrines becoming so unconsciously accepted that they are never challenged and so long as person does not think about them, they might be held on to. But that is not a good way to bring such doctrines to life. That is a good way to create beliefs that are paper thin and blow away in the first gentle breeze of challenge or discussion.

 

Eventually I realized I was enjoying the course and learning a lot. I loved the course. The Professor became my favourite Professor. Not only that but I was amazed at how much I learned in that class. I do not remember how well I did in that course. It did not matter for I had learned so much.

 

I was even more amazed, many years later how much knowledge I had retained from that class, even though I never practiced in the area of insurance law. The knowledge that was hard earned stuck with me for decades. The principles of tort law, which I had learned so well by rote memorization soon disappeared into the ether. I soon forgot them all. I did not really learn them because I had not engaged in the subject. Sitting back and learning by rote is a poor way to learn, even when the professor is very good and engaging. The principles I had memorized were not really meaningful. They were not alive inside me as the principles of insurance law were. As soon as the exam was over I started to forget what I had learned by memorization.

 

I think it is the same with principles of religion or ethics. The hard won principles which we must defend mean the most. The easy answers are dead and soon forgotten.

 

Many years later I became a part time teacher of law at the same University. I realized that I did not want to lecture students. I realized they would not really be engaged if I did that. So I became the type of Professor I had hated in Law School. I used as best I could the Socratic method that my Insurance law professor had used. I wanted my students to become engaged and learn something that would stick in their minds. I wanted them to debate and consider alternatives. I did not want to them to memorize even my ideas and my theories. I hope I did that. I drilled them with questions and made them defend their positions.

 

Indoctrination is not the best way to teach and is not the best way to learn. Indoctrination leads to the death of doctrine, as odd as that sounds. I know many parents who think they must do that, and provided it is done from a very young age, can lead to doctrines becoming so unconsciously accepted that they are never challenged and so long as person does not think about them, they might be held on to. But that is not a good way to bring such doctrines to life. That is a good way to create beliefs that are paper thin and blow away in the first gentle breeze of challenge or discussion.

 

The opinion is true: Freedom not Indoctrination

 

All I have considered so far, is John Stuart Mill’s consideration of the possibility that the statement might be true. How do his comments apply to statements that are true? For example, if you are a Christian and believe in the truth of the gospel can you benefit from heresy? If you are a liberal who believes that the election of Joseph Biden as president in 2020 was not stolen by fraud should you nonetheless accept and consider heretical opinions that the election was fraudulent?

 

Mill  argued that people should be free to challenge true opinions on the grounds that this would maximize the amount of benefit or happiness for society. You might have thought that this would be a difficult claim to establish.

 

Here Mill makes a fascinating point.  Anyone should be free to challenge an opinion even if is true.  This is an extremely important point and I never seriously considered it until I read Mill.

 

Mill asked an important question, how will an opinion be held when its truth is not freely and openly discussed. One would think that would not matter. Right? After all, if we believe it to be true because it is never challenged we will believe what is true.  But Mill asks, how will we believe that true statement?

 

Mill says, “however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as dead dogma, not a living truth.” Mill points out that there are people who believe that it is good enough if a person accepts what he is taught as true.  In fact, as we all know, most parents take this position. For example, they teach their children what is right and wrong. They want their children to accept that the things the parents think are wrong are in fact wrong. They want their children to accept that the things the parents think are right are in fact right. That is their goal. This is the goal of indoctrination.

Indoctrination is particularly robust in cases of religion—perhaps because rational argument and debate are so difficult and as a result the views of the children will be, it is believed by the parents, forever weak and subject to undermining by others. And that will not do. Mill strongly disagrees. So do I.

Indoctrinators don’t care if the object of their attention has any knowledge of the grounds of their opinion or not. What counts is the opinion, not the reason for the opinion. It matters not to these parents that the children could not make a tenable defence of the opinion against the most superficial objection. What matters is that the opinion is firmly held no matter what. Naturally people who indoctrinate others “if they can once get their creed taught from authority naturally think that no good, and some harm, comes of its being allowed to be questioned.”

The problem with this approach according to Mill is that such an opinion can never be rejected wisely, but actually can be rejected rashly and ignorantly. That is because one can never shut out discussion completely no matter how hard one tries. When rational discussion creeps in, as it always eventually does,

beliefs not grounded on conviction are apt to give way before the slightest semblance of an argument. Waiving, however, this possibility, assuming the true opinion abides in the mind, but abides as a prejudice, a belief independent of, and proof against, argument—this is not the way in which truth ought to be held by a rational being. This is not knowing the truth. Truth, thus held, is but one superstition the more, accidentally clinging to the words which enunciate a truth.

 This is what faith is. Faith is not based on grounds or reasons. In fact, often it is held against grounds or reasons.  Mill says, it is held like a prejudice.  That is because it is not based on reason and evidence but something else—like a superstition. It is not enough to be told the grounds or reasons either. That is still indoctrination. It is not lived; it is not experienced. It is a dead truth. And how much is that worth?